A reflection by Juanita Crampton.

It was August 1962, almost 62 years ago, and I had just completed my junior year in high school. I was about to be one of the last people for many, many years, to experience the beauty and majesty of Glen Canyon. I knew about the dam and based on my father’s knowledge knew the inundation of the canyon by Lake Powell was going to be a disaster in many ways.

My father, C. Gregory Crampton, was a regular in the canyons of the Colorado River. As mentioned in his book, Ghosts of Glen Canyon, he conducted historical salvage studies for the National Park Service in Glen Canyon from 1957–1963. He and his research team made an impressive thirteen trips through Glen Canyon “identifying, documenting and photographing the evidence of man’s experience there.”

What I knew best and loved about my father was his relationship with Nature. Being in Nature, contemplating Nature, and fathoming our relationship with Nature captured his life long attention. He had broad and sweeping views of Nature and was compelled to share his experiences and discoveries.

Now that 62 years have passed and I have had my own rich, diverse, and meaningful life experience, I have forgotten many of the details of that trip through Glen Canyon back in 1962. While I don’t remember all of the names of the side canyons and crossings, what I do remember is the company: my father, the boatman Frank Wright, his sidekick — Cal I believe his name was — and the 4 members of the Garms family. Eight of us set off in two boats for the experience of a lifetime.

We often drifted along feeling one with the river, bound only by our limited minds. We camped on her banks, swam into her canyons, climbed and descended Moqui steps, inched along canyon ledges, and sang in Music Temple. Once in a while the boat towed us behind and we became acquainted with the river and the canyon from a different perspective. One afternoon Dad caught a small fish and we laughed at the prospect of a skimpy dinner.

I felt like a dwarf in Glen Canyon, a tiny mortal journeying between imposing, magnificent, vast canyon walls that had been carved over millennia by the power of Nature. That my father, an inveterate modern explorer, chose to investigate and record the history of this place, gives me great pleasure. That he found his own connection with Spirit in the land, water and all the elements, gives me great joy.

Dad never talked about his spiritual journey, but he didn’t have to. He showed me on that trip down the Glen Canyon of the Colorado in 1962. Words were not the mode of communication with Dad, Nature was. He gave me the same gift that he had been given. Him inviting me along to share his love of Nature, communicated more to me than words ever could. And Glen Canyon was the piece de resistance. How could rock and river and the rhyme in the wind not show me what informs a meaningful life?

Thank you Glen Canyon of the Colorado River. Thank you Dad.